BRIEFLY

Energy

SCECorp Backs Electricity Pact: Rosemead-based SCECorp and large energy customers agreed to support a compromise between rival proposals to deregulate California's $20-billion electricity market. The compromise would delay competition in the electricity industry for a year until 1998. It would also allow electricity consumers to choose between buying their electricity for a set price directly from a single producer or at a variable price from a power pool supplied by all electricity producers in the state. The price for power from the pool would be set at auctions conducted every half an hour. The agreement "lowers the risk of some really heated legislative battles" in the Legislature this fall, said Steven Fleishman, an analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds. Gov. Pete Wilson released a statement in Sacramento praising the move as "a step in the right direction to the continued effort to make California more competitive."